Are You Managing Your Own Dental Website & Other Web Assets?

Don’t forget these key maintenance tasks….

Whilst most clients here at Dental Media simply leave our team to look after all of their web assets e.g. their website, content management system, blog and domain name etc, some elect to do it themselves.

This is fine of course, but looking after those elements does require a good level of diligence to avoid unexpected problems. Unfortunately we’ve seen too many examples where a panicked client has called us to advise that their website has gone off-line, subsequently for us to find that they’ve forgotten to renew their domain name or hosting. Whilst this is usually retrievable, there are risks involved, for example an expired domain name left too long can be lost or a website off-line for too long, de-indexed by Google.

With this in mind, what are the key things you need to be looking out for if you do prefer to manage your own web assets and what needs to be done to avoid any problems?

Your dental practice domain name

Your domain name is extremely important as this is effectively the address for your identity on the web. Usually a domain name is registered for one or two years, although it is possible to register for longer than this. As long as the domain is registered to you or your business, then you can use it as the address for your website, blog and emails.

Domains can also be set to “auto renew” and this is the default setting we use for client’s domain names. However, we do request that they notify us if the domain is no longer needed and periodically we have to hop into our domain management portal to update the settings for one of more of the hundreds of domains we look after on behalf of dentists.

If you opt to look after your domain name yourself, you will need to manage the regular renewals to ensure you don’t lose the domain. You will also need to allow us access to the admin panel so we can look after any DNS changes (for routing your website traffic and email etc) on your behalf. Please don’t lose any of your details as problems logging in can result.

Your website, content management system and back-ups

All modern dental websites come with a content management system (CMS). These systems require fairly regular updates to ensure that the functionality and security is maintained. Where we look after websites for our clients, we carry out these tasks on a scheduled basis, ensuring that all stays working as expected and minimising the risk of hacking. We also make daily back-ups of all of the websites we host and manage to ensure that in the event of any problems, the previous working version can be quickly re-instated.

For our design clients who prefer to use our services on an ad-hoc basis, more often than not we long into their websites to find that they haven’t completed important security updates and have lost a grip on the website back-up scheduling. In a few unfortunate cases, their websites have been hacked, spotted too late and without a viable back-up – a big problem requiring a costly clean-up!

Your website content and blog

Whilst the technical elements of your website and renewal tasks for your domain name are all very important as discussed above, don’t neglect to update the content of your website and, where applicable, your dental blog too. The key reasons for this are as follows:

• stale websites don’t work as well as those which present regular, fresh, engaging content. This is true for users and also for SEO – Google can identify which websites engage users the best and awards them with improved search engine ranking
• legislative changes come along periodically e.g. GDC, CQC, ICO etc and need to be complied with. Miss these crucial updates and you could be in for a shock at your next practice audit.
• team member information – not only is keeping team member information up-to-date important for the GDC and the general public, it’s important for the team members themselves. Occasionally we’ve had a member of a dental team call us to ask why they weren’t on the practice website when we were not aware – not very motivating. So please keep your website content current and in compliance. It’s well worth allocating this updating responsibility to someone within your team.

Email systems

Perhaps the biggest area where our team has to intervene to make repairs is where a client fails to manage and maintain email boxes. Quite frequently we will receive a panicked call to advise that the practice email of email of a specific team member isn’t working. This is usually caused by one of two key problems:

• the email box is full and trash boxes have not been emptied
• a configuration change on the practice’s local network has resulted in the email becoming disconnected from the remote server

Unfortunately dentist email systems tend to be treated as “fire and forget” but periodically maintenance is required to ensure they continue to work efficiently. If you and/or your team ignore the warning messages which come from your email system, at some point it’s going to stop working and leave you with a problem.

If your email is managed by yourself or third-party and not by us, please check that you have a proactive management procedure in place to make sure any problems are addressed in good time. You wouldn’t want your patients to leave a decayed tooth too long before getting it filled?

Summary

Perhaps the best way to handle your dental practice web assets is to let someone else handle it all as is the case with most of our clients here at Dental Media. This allows you to concentrate on what you’re good at and let us worry about the rest. We’ll keep it running very smoothly for you and we’ll also be pre-empting any issues before they cause you a problem.

However, if you do decide to manage it all yourself, please read through our guidance above and proceduralise the regular intervention you need to ensure everything stays online and working for you as expected.

If you need help with any of the items discussed above, the team at Dental Media will be pleased to assist. Simply call us on 01332 672548 for guidance or use the website contact form.